The economy as published

September 2026 labor figures, published October–November 2026

The rate: Mishawaka publishes no labor series of its own; its labor market is measured as part of the two-county metropolitan area it anchors with South Bend, and the figures print as the region's, never as the city's alone. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the South Bend–Mishawaka metropolitan area's unemployment rate at 4.1 percent in September 2026, preliminary and not seasonally adjusted — the latest published month as this section closes, from the bureau's Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment release — on a civilian labor force of 153,196 and 6,300 unemployed. The same bureau's South Bend Area Economic Summary, updated 4 November 2026, reads St. Joseph County's rate for September 2026 at 4.2 percent. Indiana's statewide rate for September 2026 was 3.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, in the Indiana Department of Workforce Development's report of 21 October 2026 — a state figure on a different adjustment, printed for frame and not blended with the metro's.

The structure: The summary's employment table, September 2026, gives the metropolitan area 139,800 nonfarm jobs, down 0.1 percent over the year, in this shape: education and health services the largest sector at 34,500, then trade, transportation and utilities at 25,000, government at 16,300, manufacturing at 14,800, leisure and hospitality at 14,700, professional and business services at 13,700, mining, logging and construction at 6,700, other services at 6,100, financial activities at 5,800, and information at 2,200. The summary's wage line, from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for the first quarter of 2026, puts the area's average weekly wage at $1,217 against a national $1,654. The portrait those figures draw is the valley's, and it is also Mishawaka's working frame: a health-and-education economy first, a trade-and-logistics economy second, and a manufacturing sector of 14,800 that is a tenth of the whole — the factory city's heir, not its continuation.

The city rate, not printed: The bureau's summary carries a chart of city-level rates, and this section does not take a Mishawaka city rate from it: the chart's figures for the two Septembers could not be resolved cleanly for the city from the published summary, and a rate that cannot be read whole is not printed half-read. The metro and county figures above are the labor state at official-record size; a verified city rate belongs to the update cycle, from the underlying Local Area Unemployment Statistics series.

Sources:

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment, September 2026 (preliminary; metro rate 4.1 percent, not seasonally adjusted); Economy at a Glance, South Bend-Mishawaka, IN–MI, extracted 30 October 2026 (labor force 153,196; unemployment 6,300).
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — South Bend Area Economic Summary, updated 4 November 2026 (nonfarm employment and sectors, September 2026; St. Joseph County rate 4.2 percent; average weekly wage, first quarter 2026, area $1,217, United States $1,654).
3. Indiana Department of Workforce Development — Indiana September 2026 Employment Report, 21 October 2026 (state unemployment rate 3.4 percent, seasonally adjusted; labor force participation 63.1 percent).